Thermodynamics and Statistical Physics

Instruction is in the form of lectures, exercises, and mandatory laboratory sessions. Classical Thermodynamics (4.5 ECTS cr) Basic concepts: thermodynamic systems, state, equilibrium, process, cycle. Temperature and the zeroth law of thermodynamics, internal energy, pressure, enthalpy, work, heat. The phases of pure substances and phase transitions, state diagrams and phase diagrams. Ideal and non-ideal gases. The first law of thermodynamics for closed systems. Changes in the internal energy and enthalpy of ideal gases, heat capacity. Heat reservoir, heat engine, heat pump, and cooling process, the second law of thermodynamics. Reversible and irreversible processes, the Carnot cycle, the thermodynamical temperature scale, reversible heat engines, heat pumps, and cooling processes. Entropy, the principle of increasing entropy, changes in entropy for ideal gases. Analysis of heat engines, ideal cycles. Thermodynamical potentials, Helmholtz and Gibbs free energies, Maxwell's relations. Statistical Physics (3 ECTS cr) Kinetic theory for ideal gases. Probability distribution, mean, and deviation. Bernoulli processes and binomial distribution. Normal distribution, the law of large numbers, the central limit theorem, the connections between macroscopic properties and statistical mechanics. Macrostates and microstates, ensembles. Isolated systems and the microcanonical ensemble, the equiprobability principle, the entropy of isolated systems. Systems in thermal equilibrium with heat reservoirs and the canonical ensemble, the Boltzmann distribution, state sum, response functions and heat capacity, and entropy and the third law of thermodynamics. Free energy and statistical thermodynamics. Entangled particles, the Pauli principle, bosons and fermions. Classic and quantum mechanical ideal gas; the Maxwell-Boltzmann, Bose-Einstein, and Fermi- Dirac distributions; black body radiation.